THE WHITE STONES

One of 26 lettered copies (A-Z) printed on tinted paper of which only 18 were bound (I-Z); this copy lettered Z in red ink to the colophon page at the back. Dark green cloth lettered in white to the spine with white stones design stamped to the front panel. Lacking the lettering and the black frame around the stones of the trade edition; likewise, the lettering to the spine is in block capitals instead of the mixed cases of the trade edition. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth, lettering and front panel design sharp and bright, the contents clean throughout. Minor bumping to lower outer corners. An excellent example of the elusive lettered edition of J. H. Prynne's great third book. Exceptionally scarce in commerce.

This limited edition of 'The White Stones' occupies an intriguing position in Prynne's knotty publishing history. According to Michael Tencer, in his online bibliography of the poet, there were – in addition to the hardback trade edition issued in an "unknown quantity" by the Grosseteste Press in 1969 – 26 "special" lettered hardback copies "printed on tinted paper, presumably also in 1969", bound "in green buckram c. 1995" and sold by Peter Riley, fellow Cambridge poet, bookseller, and friend of Prynne. Riley, with Andrew Crozier, was a founder-editor of 'The English Intelligencer', the now legendary 1960s journal where many of the poems in 'The White Stones' originally appeared. Tencer notes that "the colophon for the special edition reads [as does the present copy] 'signed edition of 26 copies lettered A–Z', but the copies were not signed, and it is unclear whether the full 26 copies were produced." Loosely laid into this copy (lettered Z and unsigned) is an undated slip of paper, presumably cut from one of Peter Riley's occasional catalogues, which clarifies things: "When 'The White Stones' was published by Grosseteste Press in 1969, there was to be a signed edition of 26 copies on a special paper, which was never in fact published. The sheets of this edition have recently come to light and have been bound in a new high-quality binding of green buckram lettered in white and with the pictorial device from the binding of the original edition reproduced on the top cover. This edition is not signed. Eighteen of the twenty-six copies, lettered I to Z, are for sale at £50 each. The White Stones is the most important book of poems published in England in the 1960s. There is no doubt whatsoever about that." Riley's enthusiasm for and conviction of the importance of the book is widely shared. As Peter Gizzi writes in his introduction to the recent NYRB reissue of 'The White Stones' (New York, 2018), "Very few books of poetry published in England in the 20th century have the aura of J.H. Prynne's 'The White Stones'", while Jeremy Noel-Tod notes that, "[d]espite the author's reputation for obscurity, everything you need to 'get' these poems, as poems, is in them: their rhythms, their images, their wit, their surprises and contradictions, their passionate insistence". At once ecstatic, meditative and lyrical, the poems in 'The White Stones' are, as Gizzi has it, "faceted like crystal to daylight, or as Prynne would have it: 'The striations are part of the heart's / desire.'" (Tencer)